


Raise your Glass

by indoissetep



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Injury, M/M, Spoilers for Before the Awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5842201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indoissetep/pseuds/indoissetep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Operation: Sabre Strike, the remaining members of Rapier Squadron raise toasts to their victories... and to their losses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raise your Glass

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work of fanfiction. It was originally posted to my tumblr (@indoissetep), so some might already be familiar with it.

It took Poe Dameron nearly five hours to come down. Long after he had safely landed the _Hevurion Grace_ in the hangar of the _Echo of Hope_ ; long after he had planted both his feet on solid ground – or at least what passes for solid ground aboard a cruiser –  and long after he had taken off that horrible, stifling EVA suit, he still felt like he was hurtling through the void of space.

His body felt weightless, free from the constraining force of gravity – artificial or not. He was carried along by a momentum over which he had little control, but somehow that didn’t make him unneasy.

He knew what this was, had felt it enough times after many a dogfight or especially daring feat of piloting. He recognized the elation, the cold burn of adrenaline rushing through his body. It was a wave, and he knew that it would soon come crashing down on him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ride it for as long as it lasted.

Especially since it looked like he was in for a bad time once the adrenaline stopped numbing his pain receptors. It turned out that colliding with a luxury ship at a considerably high speed had actually done more damage to his body than Poe had originally thought. A concerned doctor had taken one look at him in the hangar and promptly rushed him to the medbay.

The list of injuries was as follows: a split lip, a bruise that covered most of the left side of his face, a possible mild concussion and two fractured ribs. Nothing too serious, in Poe’s humble opinion, but the doctor seemed to disagree. The man had announced that Poe would have to spend the night under observation in the medbay. Now, Poe had only been with the Resistance for a relatively short time and had never had cause to visit the _Echo of Hope’s_ medbay before, so he didn’t hold the doctor’s naiveté against him.

If the doctor had been around them longer, he would have known that the members of what was formerly Rapier Squadron were not exactly model patients.

Whenever Karé or Iolo – or, more often, Karé _and_ Iolo – managed to land themselves in the medbay, Poe would take it upon himself to make sure they _stayed there_ for as long as the doctors deemed necessary. This was, as Muran had so eloquently put it once, a task akin to trying to herd tookas.

Luckily, Poe Dameron didn’t believe in giving up, and so herd them he did – back into the medbay and back onto their cots, making sure that they took all of their pills at the correct times and got some proper rest. And when Karé or Iolo muttered “okay, _mum_ ” and the two of them snickered behind his back, he pretended not to hear it, but secretely cracked a smile in spite of himself.

When it came to his own convalescence, Poe had always been far more liberal. The galaxy would not stand still while Poe _rested_. There was no time to sit in a medbay and lick his wounds, there was just too much to _do_. And, of course, there was also the undeniable desire to get back inside a cockpit and back in the air as soon as possible.

Muran had always been the one who tried to keep him in line. Though no one would ever have been tempted to call him motherly, he made sure that Poe actually followed doctor’s orders and didn’t overexert himself.

But Muran wasn’t here now.

So Poe had happily allowed himself to be dragged out of the medbay by Karé and Iolo, all three of them earning disapproving looks from doctors and med-droids alike – for whoever said machines were incapable of facial expressions had never met one of these droids.

He had allowed himself to be stirred into a secluded corner of the mess hall, which was deserted at this time anyway, so they need not have bothered with privacy. Operation Sabre Strike had been top-secret, its details only known by a select few, so that meant that no one would be showing up to clap Poe on the back and congratulate him. Karé, Iolo and Poe were left to their little private celebration.

And Poe couldn’t help but feel like this was a blessing.

It was a couple of hours later and Poe had lost count of how many toasts they had raised.

To a successful mission.

To making the First Order look like complete asses.

To Senator Ro-Kiintor for kindly agreeing to lend them his private yacht.

To the Z-95s’ and the _Hevurion Grace’s_ surprisingly smooth maneuverability.

To Poe’s quick thinking, audacious piloting and total disregard for self-preservation.

And finally, to Muran.

“He would have been proud,” Karé said after drinking. Poe and Iolo simply nodded, all three pilots suddenly much more subdued than they had been moments before.

Poe took another, longer sip of his whiskey. When he looked at Iolo, he noticed that the other pilot had been observing him, his oddly-colored eyes lingering for a moment before he turned away to pay attention to what Karé was saying.

Poe had long felt that Iolo’s ability to read him had very little to do with the keshian’s wider spectrum of vision and a lot to do with how long they had known each other. For the longest time now, Iolo had been able to see right through every one of Poe’s carefully constructed walls. And he had done his best to try to tear some of them down, too.

He had been the first to corner Poe and tell him that he and Muran needed to just get on with it already because it was getting _distracting_. Though Karé had done the same, not long after.

Some time around his third – only slightly exaggerated – retelling of how he had boarded the _Hevurion Grace_ , held up its occupants at blaster-point and sent them on their merry way while he stole their ship, the adrenaline rush started to dissipate.

“Our very own space pirate!” Karé exclaimed, sounding drunker than she’d ever admit to being. She grabbed Poe’s face with both hands and planted a sloppy kiss on the corner of his mouth.

Both Iolo and Poe burst into raucous laughter, but Poe’s was starting to sound hollow and forced to his own ears. His head started to feel leaden and fuzzy at the same time, and – in defiance of the bacta currently coursing through his bloodstream – his ribcage started to throb with an ache that promised to get progressively worse.

He excused himself not long after that, saying something about needing to rest to preserve his good-looks. He made sure his glass was full before he went, and took it with him as he made his unsteady way towards his quarters.

BB-8 beeped excitedly and rolled toward him as soon as the door slid open and the lights came on in his room. He felt a pang of guilt for having completely forgotten to let the droid know that he had come back in one piece.

“I said I was coming back, didn’t I?” he said, patting BB-8 lovingly, “When have I ever lied to you?”

The droid started what seemed to be a protest, but Poe interrupted it, saying he needed to hit the refresher – he was still in the same sweaty, stinky clothes he had been wearing underneath his EVA suit, but Karé and Iolo hadn’t seemed to mind.

He slid the door shut and moved to look at himself in the mirror over the sink.

“Well, you look like shit,” he told his own reflection, his tone just a touch darker than what he was going for.

The cut on his lip looked nasty and swollen, and the alcohol made it sting when he stubbornly ran his tongue over it. The bruise on the left side of his face seemed to have at least five different shades of pink, blue and purple. Lifting the hem of his shirt, he noticed that the skin underneath the bacta patches looked equally festive.

The light over the mirror was harsh and unforgiving, and it was starting to make the space just behind his eyes hurt. He remembered the extra painkillers the doctor had offered him and fished in his pockets for them.

_“You’re not supposed to mix those with alcohol,”_ Muran’s voice said in his mind, a memory of a different, not-so-distant time.

Poe had nearly snorted at the time. He had been about to call the other pilot a dirty hypocrite, because he knew _for a fact_ that being on medication had never stopped Muran from drinking. But then he had caught a single glimpse of Muran’s withering stare and that had been enough to make him swallow his words. He had pushed his glass away and brought his hands up to lock behind his head, leaning back on his chair and going for a look of nonchalance – and, he feared, falling just short of that.

_“Alright, alright. You heard him, guys. Doctor’s orders.”_

They had been celebrating something. Poe couldn’t even remember what anymore. He had never been a heavy drinker. Had never enjoyed numbing his senses with alcohol, always prefering to remain sharp and alert. But that had been then and this was now.

He took a slow, deliberate sip of his whiskey and the bitter taste stirred memories in the back of his mind. Memories of standing in the Republic hangar, back on Mirrin Prime, of grabbing Muran by the front of his flight suit and hauling him in and tasting this same bitterness on the tip of his tongue. That had been the first time. And the last.

Poe’s head started to pound and he hurriedly tried to push away the memories of what came after that.

The _Yissira Zyde_.

The First Order.

Karé’s screams through the comm.

Rapier Four exploding. The afterimage burning against Poe’s retinas.

“Screw it,” he thought, more bitter than the unpleasant taste that was starting to settle into the back of his mouth, and took another swig.

“Screw it,” he thought again or perhaps mumbled, he wasn’t sure anymore, “Muran isn’t here now, so who cares?”

A wave of nausea came over him and he had to brace himself against the sink to keep his balance. His brain was doing barrel rolls inside his skull, all acceleration and g-force and no sense of up or down.

_“You wanna grab a drink when we come back?”_ The words had been a puff of breath against his lips, they were standing so close.

Poe squeezed his eyes shut and breathed slowly through his nose, trying to stop his throat from twisting itself into knots.

_“Hell yeah,”_ he had barely gotten the words out through his grin.

The nausea subsided just enough for him to open his eyes.

He picked up his glass again and stared at it, sloshing the drink from side to side and thinking of downing the whole thing with one gulp. The golden liquid caught the light and sparkled, but it looked flat and lifeless. The glass suddenly felt ice cold in Poe’s hand.

He looked up at his reflection once more, then unceremoniously emptied the contents of his glass down the drain. He refilled it with cold water from the tap, found the pills in his pocket again and fished them out.

“To you, buddy,” he raised his glass, in a sad immitation of a toast, popped the pills into his mouth and drained his water.

Muran would have been proud.

**Author's Note:**

> I must give credit to tumblr user @jedipilotstorm for many of the headcanons that were used in this fic.


End file.
